Creating a Shaker Flap
I have rediscovered my We R Memory Keepers Fuse tool this week. If, somehow, you have missed this tool, it is a tool that allows you to create your own pocket pages with your page protectors.
A lot of people are using them, right now, to create shakers for their cards and pages. In browsing around this week, I was inspired to create a shaker flap for a layout on my son’s graduation from University.
First, a peek at the finished layout with the shaker flap (you will have to forgive the poor photo. It is really difficult to photograph a shiny page protector.):
Here’s how it was done:
What is needed:
two page protectors – one to hold your completed layout, and one to make your flap
Products to make your layout (I used the Simple Stories Graduation Simple Set
A We R Memory Keepers Fuse Tool
Items to place in your shaker – I’ve used gold thread, sequins, seed beads, small gold stars, and some old curly-cue brads that I dug out from my stash (I removed the brad part)
How to:
The first thing you will need to do is decide exactly what size you want to make your shaker. I had already completed my layout, and knew that I wanted to make my shaker three inches wide by about 9 1/2 inches long. I wanted it shorter than the layout so that I could see the patterned paper on the layout underneath.
I cut a piece of cardstock from my scraps to measure the size that I wanted the shaker to be.
I placed that piece of cardstock inside the page protector along the edge with the holes.
Using the cardstock piece as a guide, I “sealed” the bottom edge and the side edge. (the other edge is the sealed edge of the page protector.) The top edge was left open so that I could fill the shaker.
I removed the cardstock from the pocket and I used that as my guide to fill the shaker. As a base material in my shaker I used wadded up gold thread. The reason for that was so that the other “ingredients” in my shaker would not move around as much since it would be a big shaker and the flap would be opened and closed a fair bit. On top of the wadded up thread, I laid all my other shaker ingredients.
Once I had it all laid out, I carefully slid the cardstock into the pocket, being careful to keep everything in place.
The tricky part was pulling the cardstock back out in a way that would leave the ingredients intact as they were when I laid them out. I ended up getting a long bread knife which I slid into the pocket to hold everything down as I slid the cardstock out.
Once I was happy with the way the pocket looked, I sealed the final edge with the fuse tool.
Once that was done, I laid the pocket on top of my layout that was already in another page protector, matching up the holes. Then I ran the fuse tool along the edge of the page protector and pocket to fuse them together.
Here’s another look of the completed layout:
And with the flap open:
Playing around with the Fuse tool has inspired me to create more projects with it and I’m looking forward to seeing what else I can do! If you have a Fuse tool, I’d love to see what you’ve done with it. Be sure to link it up here, or on our Facebook or Instagram pages.
Thanks for checking out my tutorial this week! I hope you have a great week!
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